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      What Chicago’s New Mayor Says About the City’s Biggest Challenges

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      It wasn’t long ago that Brandon Johnson, 47, was a county commissioner and teachers’ union organizer, unknown to many Chicagoans. On Monday he will be sworn in as the city’s 57th mayor.Mr. Johnson’s rapid ascent from political obscurity to the helm of America’s third-largest city was fueled by an unapologetically progressive platform, a gift for retail campaigning, and enthusiastic support and money from organized labor. He knocked out the incumbent mayor, Lori Lightfoot, in the first round of balloting in February, then beat Paul Vallas, a far more conservative and well-funded Democrat, in the runoff last month.Now comes the hard part.Mr. Johnson inherits a proud city that has not fully emerged from its pandemic funk. Chicago’s downtown is emptier, its public schools have fewer students, and crime rates remain far higher than before the pandemic.In an interview last week at his transition office along the Chicago River, Mr. Johnson said he was cleareyed about the scope of the challenges awaiting him but confident about the city’s trajectory.Here are some of the biggest issues facing Chicago, and what he had to say about them:The city needs a new police superintendent.“It’s important that the city of Chicago has confidence in the superintendent. That’s someone who understands constitutional policing, but someone who also understands that public safety is an overall goal that cannot be confined to policing.”The superintendent selected by Ms. Lightfoot, David Brown, resigned after she lost re-election, leaving the embattled Chicago Police Department under interim leadership. Mr. Johnson, who before running for mayor expressed support for removing some law enforcement funding, will soon have to select a permanent superintendent.Mr. Johnson said he would seek someone who understands Chicago and could earn the trust of rank-and-file officers, but also someone who shared his view of policing as just one part of a broader safety strategy. He said the new superintendent must be willing to work with newly elected councils of residents created to provide feedback and to make suggestions on law enforcement in each of the city’s police districts.Migrants at a police district in Chicago’s Lincoln Square neighborhood this month.Sebastian Hidalgo for The New York TimesChicago has struggled to house an influx of migrants.“We are a sanctuary city. There’s an incredible history of the city of Chicago being a welcoming space for families across the country and across the world.”Mr. Johnson inherits an escalating crisis: the increasingly large stream of Venezuelans and other migrants arriving by bus and plane from border states and seeking shelter in Chicago. In the last several weeks, the number of migrants entering Chicago has multiplied, filling city shelters and overwhelming police stations, where migrants have been dropped off. With the lifting last week of Title 42, a federal policy that allowed the United States to expel many people who crossed the southern border before they could apply for asylum, even more migrants are expected to flow into Chicago.The influx is both a problem and an opportunity for Chicago, a city that grew in population from 2010 to 2020, but then saw those gains erased during the pandemic, when thousands of residents moved out. Mr. Johnson said that he intended to help welcome the migrants, but said that he also wanted to make sure that Black families who have been in the city for decades are not cut out from city resources.Public education presents a formidable test.“There’s no greater institution to transform in this moment. Our public school system has to be transformed.”A former social studies teacher, Mr. Johnson most recently worked as an organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union, a progressive and politically powerful organization that engaged in repeated work stoppages during his tenure and was a chief antagonist of the most recent two mayors.Mr. Johnson has spoken repeatedly of investing in neighborhood schools as a way to address the city’s broader challenges. He said he envisioned “an education system that exposes our children to as many industries as possible in a real, tangible way,” with a far greater focus on connecting high school graduates with career opportunities, including in trades that do not require a college degree.Mr. Johnson answering a question from a high school student at a mayoral forum in February.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesDowntown still lacks its prepandemic swagger.“I believe it’s a unique opportunity for this generation to set a course that could be studied a century from now.”Downtown is not going to look the same as it did before the pandemic, Mr. Johnson said. But precisely what it will become is less clear.Mr. Johnson said he sees a chance to build on existing industries, especially in the life sciences, a sector that has seen recent growth. During his mayoral transition, Mr. Johnson has met with business and civic leaders downtown, a group that largely supported his opponent, Mr. Vallas.And Mr. Johnson will be the face of the city during one of its newest and most divisive events: a NASCAR street race downtown this summer. Mr. Johnson said that he intends to carry out the new car racing event with “care and sensitivity,” but also hopes to build on the slate of more established festivals and activities the city offers, especially those that appeal to younger people.Public safety remains a huge concern.“Do you know what safe communities do all over the country? You know what they do? They invest in people.”Mr. Johnson spoke on the campaign trail of making deep investments in communities that have seen the most violent crime, especially on the South Side and the West Side, where he lives. People will feel safer, he said, when they have strong neighborhood schools, low unemployment and access to mental health services.Those goals feel long term, but Mr. Johnson also says he hopes to make immediate changes like doubling the number of young people who have work after school and in the summer. More

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      Immigration Politics Return to the Forefront as the 2024 Race Picks Up Pace

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      Donald J. Trump rode border security to the presidency in 2016. Republicans hope the issue will be at the center of the debate again.Border security, the issue that largely defined Donald J. Trump’s victorious 2016 campaign, is back on the national agenda, a potential boost for Mr. Trump — and, for President Biden, a headache with no simple remedy in either policy or politics.The termination of a pandemic-era program that allowed officials to swiftly expel migrants was expected to draw an additional 7,000 unauthorized people a day, adding to already record levels of migrants, from Latin America and elsewhere, driven north by poverty and violence and by perceptions of a more welcoming border under Mr. Biden.At a televised town hall this week, Mr. Trump predicted that Friday would be a “day of infamy” as the policy known as Title 42 that he first put in place came to an end. He used the same fear-mongering rhetoric of his earlier campaigns to describe migrants in broad and inaccurate strokes as “released from prisons” and “mental institutions.”The Biden administration announced policies beginning in February to blunt the surge, and so far there have not been signs of disorder since the policy expired. But Mr. Trump — along with Republican officials and conservative media — in recent days have escalated their yearslong attacks over border security, claiming that Mr. Biden has ignored a burgeoning crisis.Then President Donald Trump tours progress in the construction of the southern border wall near Alamo, Texas, a city in the Rio Grande Valley near the U.S-Mexican border in January 2021.Doug Mills/The New York TimesFox News employed a countdown clock to observe the end of Title 42, while broadcasting overhead video from a “Fox flight team” of thousands of migrants in a tent camp that a correspondent said were “waiting until Title 42 drops to cross over illegally.”Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor and 2024 presidential candidate, told the far-right outlet Newsmax that what she saw on a border visit was “unbelievable,” citing cartels trafficking people and fentanyl, the lethal opioid that has caused the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans and has become a primary theme of Republican attacks on Mr. Biden’s policies.“Along with inflation, an out-of-control border is one of the administration’s greatest vulnerabilities,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster. “If you watch Fox News, there are few other issues that are as important for the federal government to address.” The lifting of Title 42, he added, was an issue “gift-wrapped with a beautiful bow” for Mr. Trump.White House and Biden campaign officials largely scoffed at this analysis, citing past efforts by Republicans and conservative media to turn caravans of migrants heading toward the border into election-year crises. For the most part, Mr. Biden himself has avoided focusing attention on the border, with polls showing that immigration motivates far more Republican voters than Democrats.Still, there is a broad recognition even among Mr. Biden’s allies that perceptions of chaos at the southern border are a political liability — though strategists are optimistic that by the time 2024 ballots are cast voters will have moved on to other topics.The expected migrant surge is “coming at a good time because it’s not coming in June or May of ’24,” said Matt Barreto, who conducts polling for Mr. Biden’s White House. “The election is not happening in June of ’23. So you’re going to see an extremely well-managed process with the resources we have.”But while there is potential for the administration to spin the handling of the situation as a show of competence, Mr. Biden’s record will be scrutinized. On his first day in office, he proposed an immigration package that offered a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented residents, protected so-called Dreamers and added technology to help secure the southern border. The bill, faced with solid Republican opposition, went nowhere. As a candidate, Mr. Biden had promised not to separate families at the border, as Mr. Trump did in 2018 — and which the former president suggested this week he would reinstate if elected in 2024. Mr. Biden’s more humane message and policies, along with the waning of the Covid-19 pandemic, have led to a rise in the number of people trying to enter the country unlawfully, contributing to a large increase in border apprehensions. Now, with the end of Title 42, the administration has introduced stricter asylum rules to turn back those crossing without permission and sent 1,500 active-duty troops to support the Border Patrol. And while pressure along the border built earlier this week — on some days more than 11,000 people crossed the southern border unlawfully and were taken into custody — according to internal agency data obtained by The New York Times, that number dropped somewhat to fewer than 10,000 people on Thursday.But even some Democrats aligned with Mr. Biden have criticized him for not doing more to control the border and for failing to highlight his policies more forcefully. “All of us who work in Democratic politics have been dreading this moment for two years,” said Lanae Erickson, who runs the public opinion and social policy division at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank. “It is very evident that Republicans still have an upper hand on immigration and people don’t think that Democrats particularly care about securing the border.”Progressives seem to agree. “They should have undone Title 42 on the first day in office. They didn’t,” said Chris Newman, the legal director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Los Angeles. “Now they have to do what they should have done in the first day of office, and they’re doing it poorly.”Polls show broad dissatisfaction with the president’s handling of immigration. In an ABC News/Washington Post poll earlier this year, just 28 percent of Americans approved of Mr. Biden’s handling of the southern border. In a Fox News poll in April of registered voters, 66 percent of white voters without a college degree said that the White House was not tough enough on unlawful immigration. A majority of Hispanic voters, 55 percent, also said the president was not tough enough. “Biden won the 2020 election not just because he got big shifts among white college voters, but he stopped the bleeding among white working class voters,’’ said Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “What happens with those voters now that he’s going into 2024 with approval ratings in the low 40s, and then you add to that an emerging immigration problem — a problem these voters very much think matters?”Other polling is more favorable to the administration. In Mr. Barreto’s recent surveys, conducted in seven battleground states for Immigration Hub, a pro-immigration group, there was broad support for Mr. Biden’s policies, including reversing Trump-era child separation and developing pathways to citizenship for Dreamers. Democrats point to recent electoral history as a counter to predictions that new scenes of disruption on the border will exact a political price. Republicans and their allies in the media have turned the prospect of caravans of migrants approaching the nation’s southern border into biennial programming designed to motivate a conservative base. But Democrats won convincing victories in 2018, Mr. Biden won the presidency in 2020 and the party over-performed expectations in last year’s midterm elections.Migrants are seen at the McAllen-Hidalgo International Bridge as U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents take down their information in Hidalgo, Texas on Thursday.Verónica G. Cárdenas for The New York TimesPart of the problem for Democrats is that their border policies tend to be more nuanced than Republicans’ blunt calls to get tough, such as Mr. Trump’s continued focus on building a wall. The Republican approach fires up the party’s base, while Democrats have focused more energy on issues like abortion rights and the economy, which can motivate theirs. Mr. Biden is also cross-pressured in his own party, with centrist Democrats calling for tougher measures and progressives warning of the dangers faced by expelled migrants and insisting on due process rights for asylum seekers. “The majority of the American people are with us on this,” said Maria Cardona, a longtime party strategist for the Democrats. “It would be easier to explain if they actually explain it, which is we are for strong border security and humane pathways to legalization.”Jon Seaton, a Republican strategist who works in Arizona, said that the latest surge of migrants was severely straining government services in parts of the border state and that the issue could play a role in tipping Arizona away from Mr. Biden in 2024, after he defeated Mr. Trump there by the slimmest of margins. Arizona’s large bloc of independent voters view immigration through a lens that is less ideological and more about government competency, Mr. Seaton said. “These images are not just on Fox News, they’re on local news, they’re fairly pervasive,” he said of scenes of people crossing the border and filling the streets of U.S. border cities. “When they see things like what’s happening, it’s really a potential problem for President Biden and his re-election, and for Democrats up and down the ticket.”Eileen Sullivan contributed reporting. More

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      Your Monday Briefing: Kishida Visits Seoul

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      Also, the U.S. braces for a surge of immigrants this week.President Yoon Suk Yeol’s critics say he has given too much and has received too little in return from Japan.Pool photo by Jung Yeon-JeJapan’s leader visits SeoulPrime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan is in South Korea today, where he is meeting President Yoon Suk Yeol in an effort to nurture a fledgling détente. Yesterday, in Seoul, the two leaders agreed to press ahead with joint efforts to improve bilateral ties — even though Kishida did not apologize for Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula in the early 20th century.Kishida went no further than saying that Japan stood by past statements, when some of his predecessors expressed remorse and apologies. He said that his “heart ached” when he thought of the suffering of the Koreans, but his words fell short of the clear and direct apology that many South Koreans, including the head of the main opposition party, had demanded.Yoon said he would not dwell on seeking such an apology, despite criticism from some Koreans: “It’s not something we can unilaterally demand; it’s something that should come naturally from the other side’s sincerity.” Instead, Yoon urged his nation to focus on the immediate challenges from North Korea and China.Context: Kishida’s two-day trip follows a visit in March by Yoon to Tokyo. It means that shuttle diplomacy is back on track after regular exchanges between the countries’ leaders ended in 2011 over historical differences.The U.S. angle: The vows to deepen national ties are another encouraging sign for the U.S., which has been urging Japan and South Korea to let go of past grievances and cooperate.In El Paso, Texas, migrants wait outside churches where they can get donated food and clothing. Justin Hamel for The New York TimesU.S. readies for immigration surgeThe U.S. is preparing to lift a pandemic-era emergency health rule that prevented hundreds of thousands of people from entering the country. It is bracing for a crush of people at the border with Mexico — and a flare in political tensions.The U.S. is expecting as many as 13,000 migrants each day beginning Friday, immediately after the measure expires. That’s up from about 6,000 migrants on a typical day. Three cities in Texas declared a state of emergency, and President Biden recently ordered 1,500 troops to the border.More people are coming from far-flung nations in economic distress or political turmoil — like Venezuela, China, India and Russia. Inside the U.S., the debate over the broken immigration system is still polarized and overheated, posing a serious political risk as the 2024 campaign starts.Context: The order, known as Title 42, allowed the U.S. government to swiftly expel citizens of several countries back to Mexico. Asylum: A tough new rule that disqualifies asylum seekers who did not first seek protection elsewhere will go into effect on Thursday.Mayor Ken Sim, right, in Vancouver’s Chinatown.Jackie Dives for The New York TimesDid China interfere in Canadian elections?The mayor of Vancouver, Ken Sim, is caught in a political storm over reports of Chinese efforts to sway elections. Sim, Vancouver’s first mayor of Chinese descent, said his sweeping victory had been hard won and suggested that he was being targeted because of his ethnic background.The debate gained steam in February when the Globe and Mail newspaper said classified intelligence reports showed that China tried to manipulate Canadian elections — including in Vancouver. The reports have not been made public, but are said to conclude that China tried to ensure victory for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party in the two most recent federal elections and support for candidates of Chinese descent.China’s former consul general in Vancouver sought to groom local Chinese Canadian politicians, according to the reports. Sim’s rival is also calling for China’s interference to be investigated. Sim rejects claims that Beijing meddled, and instead points to his tireless campaigning and more appealing policies to explain his landslide victory. “If I was a Caucasian male, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” he said.Analysis: Canada’s former ambassador to China said that Canada was seen by Beijing as a target of influence partly because Beijing sought to use Canada as a lever to press the U.S. to soften its opposition to China.THE LATEST NEWSAround the WorldAs of May, a nonprofit group has recorded 192 mass shootings in the U.S.Jeremy Lock/ReutersAt least nine people died, including the gunman, in a mass shooting at a mall in Texas.King Charles III was crowned on Saturday. Here are pictures from the coronation.Arab nations agreed to let Syria rejoin the Arab League, a step toward ending the country’s 12-year-long international ostracism.Israel is refusing to hand over the body of a prominent Palestinian prisoner, drawing scrutiny of the country’s practice of keeping bodies as leverage to bargain for Israeli remains.The War in UkraineUkraine is feeling immense pressure from Western allies for success in a looming counteroffensive.More than 5.5 million Ukrainians who left after the war began have returned home — even if it is near the front line.The Dnipro River, a front line in the war, is an ancient battleground. Our photographer spent weeks traveling along the waterway. See her images.Asia PacificThe violence in Manipur erupted over a question of who gets to claim special tribal status.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesEthnic clashes have killed dozens of people in Manipur, a remote state in northeast India.A group of top Indian wrestlers, who accused the sport’s top official in the country of serial sexual harassment, vowed to continue pushing for his arrest.DNA evidence helped confirm that a “great father” who lived in Australia under an alias was actually a convicted killer and an escaped inmate from Nebraska.Netflix, encouraged by the success of “The Glory,” plans to spend $2.5 billion more on Korean content.The Australia Letter: Can Warner Bros. stop a Tasmanian sports team from being called the Tasmanian Devils?A Morning ReadSaumya Khandelwal for The New York TimesSherpa guides are leaving the industry of taking trekkers up Mount Everest and encouraging their children to pursue other careers. There are many reasons for the shift: The job is dangerous, the pay is modest and there’s scant job security.“I see no future,” Kami Rita Sherpa, a renowned guide pictured above in blue, told his son.SPOTLIGHT ON AFRICAThis family left Khartoum and traveled 10 days to reach Aswan, Egypt.Heba Khamis for The New York TimesOn the run, againSudan’s war, sparked by two feuding generals, has driven more than 100,000 civilians across borders, and aid workers say as many as 800,000 could be forced to flee in the coming months.Thousands have fled to Egypt and Saudi Arabia and to relatively safer towns within Sudan. For many on the run, flight is not new. “The really, really sad thing about this is that this is not the first time these people are fleeing,” said Charlotte Hallqvist, a spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for South Sudan.Sudan had more than a million refugees from countries already torn apart by civil war, like Syria and South Sudan. It also had millions of internally displaced people fleeing conflict within Sudan. Now, as the new fighting enters a fourth week, these people are on the move again, facing another wave of violence and trauma.In the Darfur region of Sudan, more than three million were driven from their homes during a civil war in the early 2000s. Just weeks before the latest violence broke out, local authorities had started planning the gradual voluntary return of refugee communities in Darfur, said Toby Harward, principal situation coordinator in Darfur for the U.N.H.C.R. Instead, more are now fleeing the region. — Lynsey Chutel, a Times writer in JohannesburgPLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookKelly Marshall for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Roscoe Betsill. Prop Stylist: Paige Hicks.These toasted sesame and scallion waffles are light and savory.What to Listen toTimes music critics curated a playlist of 11 new songs.The News QuizTest your memory of last week’s headlines.Now Time to PlayPlay the Mini Crossword, and a clue: Theater backdrops (four letters).Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — AmeliaP.S. The W.H.O. announced that smallpox had been eradicated 43 years ago today.“The Daily” is about the Hollywood strike. “Hard Fork” is on the social media site Bluesky.Email us at briefing@nytimes.com.Lynsey Chutel, a Times writer in Johannesburg, wrote today’s Spotlight on Africa. More

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      Did China Help Vancouver’s Mayor Win Election?

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      Ken Sim, Vancouver’s first mayor of Chinese descent, rejects claims of Chinese interference and says his landslide win was due to his tireless campaigning and more appealing policies.VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Every day when he arrives at his office in City Hall, Mayor Ken Sim stares at a prominent black-and-white photograph of Chinese railway workers toiling on the tracks in British Columbia in 1884.Mr. Sim, the son of Hong Kong immigrants, said the workers’ weathered faces are a daily reminder of the symbolic importance of his election as Vancouver’s first Chinese Canadian mayor, and of just how far Chinese Canadians have come.Six months ago, his historic landslide victory was widely lauded, viewed as the triumph of a politically adroit change-maker whose centrist policies had swept him to power. But since February, the Globe and Mail newspaper in Toronto has cited classified intelligence reports in describing an effort by Beijing to manipulate Canadian elections, including those in Vancouver, raising questions about whether China played a role in his win.Across Canada, a political storm is raging over the intelligence reports, which have not been made public by Canada’s national intelligence agency but are said to conclude that the government of China and its diplomats wanted to ensure victory for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party in the two most recent federal elections, while encouraging wins for some candidates of Chinese descent.Mr. Sim has been caught in the furor because the reports say China’s former consul general in Vancouver, Tong Xiaoling, sought to groom local Chinese Canadian politicians to do Beijing’s bidding and spoke of mobilizing Chinese voters to support them.While the leaked intelligence has reverberated nationally, with the opposition Conservatives seizing on the reports to accuse Mr. Trudeau of failing to protect Canadian democracy, the debate has caused particular discomfort in Vancouver, where a quarter of the population is of Chinese descent and Mr. Sim had been seen as an immigrant success story. Mr. Sim said that if there had been Chinese or any foreign interference in his election, “I would be mad as hell.” But, he added, Beijing had nothing to do with his being elected mayor.He said his sweeping victory had been hard won, and he suggested that he was being targeted because of his ethnic background.“If I was a Caucasian male, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” the 52-year-old entrepreneur-turned-politician said in an interview from his office, as Van Halen music blasted from a vintage-style phonograph. “I was born here, raised here, and this sends the signal that when you finally get a seat at the table, people are going to tell you, ‘You didn’t get there on your own.’ It’s disgusting.” He added, “Where’s the proof?”Mr. Sim at New Town Bakery in Vancouver’s Chinatown.Jackie Dives for The New York TimesThe authenticity and accuracy of the leaks have not been verified by Canada’s intelligence agency, nor has there been any evidence presented that the aims outlined in the leaks were carried out.But Canada’s intelligence agency has stated unequivocally that China is trying to interfere in Canadian elections, a claim China has denied.Mr. Sim first ran for mayor in 2018 — and narrowly lost, partly because he was perceived by many as a conservative in a suit. During the 2022 campaign, he wore jeans and T-shirts.Jackie Dives for The New York TimesAnalysts said that, while China sought to wield political influence in Vancouver, whatever role it played was unlikely to have swung the vote.Kennedy Stewart, the incumbent mayor and Mr. Sim’s left-wing rival, agreed. “Chinese interference isn’t the primary reason I lost,” he said. “But it may have been a contributing factor.” He received 29 percent of the vote to Mr. Sim’s 51 percent.Mr. Stewart said Ms. Tong, the Chinese consul general, who ended her five-year posting in July 2022, had repeatedly breached diplomatic protocol in the years leading up to the election by denouncing him publicly because of his outspoken support for Taiwan.Mr. Stewart said that in May 2022, about five months before the election, officials from Canada’s national intelligence agency came to City Hall to brief him about the potential threat of Chinese meddling, including the use of smear campaigns by China and its proxies online or on social media.A few months later, in August, a statement attacking Mr. Stewart appeared on the Chinese consulate general’s website, after he expressed support for former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan that month. The statement warned Mr. Stewart not to play with fire on the Taiwan issue, saying, “Those who play with fire will burn.”Mr. Sim speaking with paramedics in Vancouver.Jackie Dives for The New York TimesVancouver, a multicultural west coast port city of about 660,000, is among the most picturesque, tolerant cities in Canada, where residents can buy CBD dog treats for their anxious canines at local marijuana shops before biking in Stanley Park.But Vancouver has been convulsed by soaring real estate prices that have made it among the most unaffordable cities in North America. At the same time, a drug overdose crisis is raging in its Downtown Eastside, an area blighted by homelessness, poverty and crime.Mr. Sim promised to help reverse the urban decay by hiring 100 more police officers and 100 mental health nurses.Mr. Sim first ran for mayor in 2018 — and narrowly lost, perceived by many as a conservative in a suit. But in 2022, he wore T-shirts from Lululemon, the famous Vancouver brand, and refashioned himself as a pragmatist.He owns a successful health care company, Nurse Next Door, which provides caregivers in Canada, Australia and the United States.Mr. Sim in the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden in Vancouver’s Chinatown.Jackie Dives for The New York TimesIn the 2022 election, Mr. Sim’s public order message appears to have resonated, helping him win by a margin of nearly 22 points.Andy Yan, director of the City Program at Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University, said Mr. Sim, a former investment banker, also outspent his rivals, in some cases by two to one. He said Mr. Sim had wide appeal in a region fed up with “San Francisco housing values and Kansas City wages.”Mr. Yan also stressed that Vancouver’s large, diverse Chinese immigrant community did not vote as a bloc.Stewart Prest, a lecturer in political science at Simon Fraser University, added that Mr. Stewart was perceived as a weak incumbent. Yet the leaks, Mr. Stewart’s public calls for China’s interference to be investigated, and the national outcry have kept alive concerns about China’s role in the race.Mr. Sim has dismissed suspicions that he is influenced by his cousin Bernard Chan, a politician and businessman who was a top adviser to Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s former pro-Beijing chief executive.Jackie Dives for The New York TimesCanada’s national intelligence agency, C.S.I.S., said in an emailed statement that China was trying to influence election outcomes in Canada by exerting pressure on diaspora communities, using covert funding or taking advantage of foreign-language media outlets.Guy Saint-Jacques, a former Canadian ambassador to China, observed that Canada was seen by Beijing as a target of influence — and subterfuge — partly because Beijing sought to use Canada as a lever to press the United States to soften its opposition to China.China experts and Canadian intelligence officials said that China’s influence campaigns abroad typically emanated from the United Front Work Department, an organ of the Chinese Communist Party. Among its aims was to undermine federal, provincial or municipal officials who criticized China on issues such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and China’s repression of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang.In the Vancouver mayoral election, speculation about Chinese interference was also fanned by reports in the Chinese-language media that Mr. Sim’s first cousin is Bernard Chan, a Hong Kong politician and businessman who was a top adviser to Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s former pro-Beijing chief executive.Mr. Sim during a news conference.Jackie Dives for The New York Times Mr. Sim said that Mr. Chan did not influence him in any way and that he studiously avoided talking to Mr. Chan about politics. “I don’t choose the political beliefs of anyone that’s related to me,” he said.He said he had purposely underplayed his Chinese roots during the election campaign, wary of using his ethnic background to win votes.Mr. Sim is the youngest son of Hong Kong immigrants who arrived in Vancouver in 1967 with their life savings of $3,200. He said that during his childhood his parents spoke Cantonese at home, but, eager to fit in, he refused his parents’ entreaties to learn the language. He now regrets that decision.The family often struggled to pay rent, and Mr. Sim moved five times from the age of 7 until 12, forcing him to attend five different elementary schools. He remembered at 7 seeing his father fend off a predatory landlord with a bat.“We lived in fear, asking, ‘Where are we going to live?’”On a recent day in Vancouver’s Chinatown, many local residents expressed pride in the election of a Chinese Canadian mayor.But Fred Kwok, chairman of the Chinese Cultural Center, which was targeted in a suspected arson attack the night before, said Mr. Sim’s ethnic background didn’t matter to him.“I don’t care what Ken Sim’s race is,” he said. “I care about security in Chinatown and someone doing something about it. Nobody did a thing the past four years.”Mr. Sim at his desk at City Hall.Jackie Dives for The New York Times More

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      House G.O.P., Divided Over Immigration, Advances Border Crackdown Plan

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      Republicans are eyeing a vote next month on legislation that would reinstate Trump-era policies, after feuding that led leaders to drop some of the plan’s most extreme provisions.WASHINGTON — House Republicans on Thursday pushed ahead with a sweeping immigration crackdown that would codify several stringent border policies imposed by the Trump administration, after months of internal feuding that led G.O.P. leaders to drop some of the plan’s most extreme provisions.The House Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees in recent days approved their pieces of the plan, which has little chance of being considered in the Democratic-led Senate but sets up a pivotal test of whether Republican leaders can deliver on their campaign promise to clamp down on record migrant inflows.For Republicans, who have repeatedly attacked President Biden on his immigration policies and embarked on an effort to impeach his homeland security secretary, the measure is a chance to lay out an alternative vision on an issue that galvanizes its right-wing base.The legislation, now expected on the floor next month, would direct the Biden administration to resume constructing the border wall that was former President Donald J. Trump’s signature project. It would also mandate that employers check workers’ legal status through an electronic system known as E-Verify and reinstate the “Remain in Mexico” policy, forcing asylum applicants to wait in detention facilities or outside the United States before their claims are heard.The plan “will force the administration to enforce the law, secure the border, and reduce illegal immigration once again,” Representative Mark E. Green, Republican of Tennessee and the Homeland Security Committee’s chairman, said during the panel’s debate on Wednesday.Democrats have derided the package as misguided and draconian, accusing Republicans of seeking to invigorate their core supporters in advance of the 2024 election by reviving some of Mr. Trump’s most severe border policies. They made vocal objections to provisions that would ban the use of the phone-based app known as “C.B.P. One” to streamline processing migrants at ports of entry, expedite the deportation of unaccompanied minors, and criminalize visa overstays of more than 10 days.Republicans “want to appeal to their extreme MAGA friends more than they want progress,” Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, said Wednesday, calling the Republican legislation a “profoundly immoral” piece of legislation that would “sow chaos at the border.”Still, the package represents a compromise of sorts between hard-right Republicans and more mainstream G.O.P. lawmakers, including a mostly Latino group from border states that balked at proposals that threatened to gut the nation’s asylum system.The party’s immigration plan — which top Republicans had hoped to pass as one of their first bills of their new House majority — has been stalled for months. A faction led by Representative Tony Gonzales, Republican of Texas, has raised concerns about the asylum changes, threatening to withhold votes that Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, cannot afford to lose given his slim majority.Over the last week, G.O.P. leaders have quietly made a series of concessions to win over the skeptics. Republicans on the Judiciary Committee agreed to drop a provision that would have effectively stopped the intake of asylum seekers if the government failed to detain or deport all migrants seeking to enter the country without permission. But the measure still contains a number of new asylum restrictions.“It’s in a good spot,” Mr. Gonzales said of the legislation on Thursday, saying that the changes made to the asylum provision had satisfied his concerns. “As long as nobody does any funny business — you’ve got to watch it till the very end.”G.O.P. leaders predicted on Thursday that they would be able to draw a majority for the legislation when it comes to the House in mid-May, a timeline selected to coincide with the expected expiration of a Covid-era policy allowing officials to swiftly expel migrants at the border. The termination of the program, known as Title 42, is expected to inspire a new surge of attempted border crossings and supercharge the already bitter partisan debate over immigration policy.But it was unclear whether Republicans who had objected to the E-Verify requirement would be on board.Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky withheld his support for the Judiciary Committee’s bill because of the work authorization mandate, arguing that people “shouldn’t have to go through an E-Verify database to exercise your basic human right to trade labor for sustenance.”Such databases “always get turned against us, and they’re never used for the purpose they were intended for,” added Mr. Massie, a conservative libertarian.Representative Dan Newhouse, a Republican farmer in Washington State, has expressed concern that the E-Verify mandate could create labor shocks in the agricultural sector, which relies heavily on undocumented immigrant labor. Though the legislation delays the requirement for farmers for three years, Mr. Newhouse has argued that any such change should be paired with legislation creating more legal pathways for people to work in the United States.With the expected floor vote just weeks away, G.O.P. leaders have been treading carefully, even making last-minute concessions to Democrats in hopes of bolstering support for the legislation.During the wee hours on Thursday morning, as the Homeland Security Committee debated its bill, Republicans pared back language barring nongovernmental organizations that assist undocumented migrants from receiving funding from the Department of Homeland Security. They did so after Democrats pointed out the broadly phrased prohibition could deprive legal migrants and U.S. citizens of critical services as well.Their changes did not go far enough to satisfy Democrats, who unanimously opposed the package on the Judiciary and the Homeland Security panels — and are expected to oppose the combined border security package en masse on the House floor.They have also argued that any measure to enhance border security or enforcement must be paired with expanded legal pathways for immigrants to enter the United States. More

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      BBC Suspends Host Gary Lineker Over Immigration Comments

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      Mr. Lineker, one of England’s best-known sports personalities, had accused the British home secretary of using language reminiscent of Nazi Germany to promote a plan to stop asylum seekers.One of the premier soccer programs on British television was thrown into turmoil on Friday after the BBC suspended its host, the former English soccer star Gary Lineker, over comments he made criticizing the Conservative government’s plan to stop asylum seekers who arrive on boats across the English Channel.Mr. Lineker, a former captain of England’s national soccer team and the top goal scorer at the 1986 World Cup, ignited a firestorm on the political right after he suggested on Tuesday that the British home secretary, Suella Braverman, was using language reminiscent of Nazi Germany to promote the plan.After several days of debate played out on social media, in the pages of British newspapers and in the halls of Parliament, the BBC said on Friday that Mr. Lineker’s social media activity was “a breach of our guidelines,” and that he had been suspended from hosting “Match of the Day,” a mainstay of the BBC’s schedule since 1964.“The BBC has decided that he will step back from presenting ‘Match of the Day’ until we’ve got an agreed and clear position on his use of social media,” the British Broadcasting Corporation said in a statement.“When it comes to leading our football and sports coverage, Gary is second to none,” the statement said. “We have never said that Gary should be an opinion-free zone, or that he can’t have a view on issues that matter to him, but we have said that he should keep well away from taking sides on party political issues or political controversies.”Soon after the BBC issued the statement, two others who host “Match of the Day” with Mr. Lineker, Ian Wright and Alan Shearer, said that they would not appear on the show on Saturday.“Everybody knows what Match of the Day means to me, but I’ve told the BBC I won’t be doing it tomorrow,” Mr. Wright wrote on Twitter. “Solidarity.”Mr. Shearer wrote, “I have informed the BBC that I won’t be appearing on MOTD tomorrow night.”The BBC reported that the program would still be broadcast on Saturday, without hosts. Saturday’s “Match of the Day” will “focus on match action without studio presentation or punditry,” a BBC spokesman was quoted as saying by the BBC.The program, which features highlights from Saturday’s Premier League games, usually draws millions of viewers, according to the BBC.Mr. Lineker, who first appeared on “Match of the Day” as a presenter in 1999, signed a five-year contract in 2020 to remain with the BBC until 2025.After parlaying his hugely successful soccer career into a career as one of Britain’s best-known sports personalities, Mr. Lineker has frequently engaged in debates on social media, most prominently when he supported the campaign for Britain to remain inside the European Union.His comments have sometimes led to criticism from the right and accusations that he is violating the BBC’s guidelines on impartiality.Such was the case with his comments on the government’s plan to stop asylum seekers.Mr. Lineker had responded on Twitter to a video that the Home Office had posted in which Ms. Braverman promoted legislation that would give the office a “duty” to remove nearly all asylum seekers who arrive on boats across the English Channel, even though many are fleeing war and persecution.“Enough is enough,” Ms. Braverman declares. “We must stop the boats.”Mr. Lineker responded with sharp criticism.“This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s, and I’m out of order?” he wrote.The comments were roundly rejected by Ms. Braverman and others on the right, and they set off a debate about the BBC’s impartiality and the comparison to Nazi Germany.“It diminishes the unspeakable tragedy that millions of people went through, and I don’t think anything that is happening in the U.K. today can come close to what happened in the Holocaust,” Ms. Braverman said in an interview this week with the BBC. “So I find it a lazy and unhelpful comparison to make.”In The Daily Telegraph, the journalist Charles Moore accused Mr. Lineker of being “the most famous exemplar of the power of the BBC’s ‘talent’ to trash its impartiality.”“He expresses not the voice of the concerned citizen, but the arrogance of a man of power,” Mr. Moore wrote. “He is the big player who thinks he can defy the ref. The reputation of the entire BBC and its director-general depends on telling him he cannot.”On the political left, others defended Mr. Lineker and expressed dismay that the BBC had pulled him from “Match of the Day.”“This feels like an over reaction brought on by a right-wing media frenzy obsessed with undermining the BBC,” Lucy Powell, a member of Parliament from the Labour and Cooperative Party, wrote on Twitter. More

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      This Is Not How Pete Buttigieg Wanted to Visit Ohio

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      Gail Collins: Bret, Democratic strategists are worried about hanging on to support in the working class. The good news, from my perspective, is that it looks like the big problem is economic concerns, not cultural ones.Saying that’s good news because the Biden administration can respond to those worries by pointing to a ton of effort to create jobs and fight inflation.Guessing you may, um, disagree?Bret Stephens: In the immortal words of the “Airplane” sequel: “Just a tad.”The big problem for Democrats is that their economic message — that happy times are here again — isn’t landing in the places where they need to win, particularly factory towns where elections in states like Wisconsin or Ohio are sometimes decided. Inflation is still too high and probably means the Fed will continue to raise interest rates. Unemployment is low in part because so many people have dropped out of the labor force. Years of lax border control creates a perception that cheap immigrant labor will further undercut working-class wages. And a lot of the projects that President Biden’s spending bills are supposed to fund will take years to get off the ground because there’s rarely such a thing as a “shovel-ready” project.Gail: Yeah, gearing up for a big construction effort does take time. But people who’ve suffered with terrible transportation problems for years do know the shovels are coming. Like the bridge project over the Ohio River that Democrats in Cincinnati have joined hands with Mitch McConnell to celebrate.Bret: The other problem for Democrats is that if they aren’t winning the messaging battle when it comes to the economy, they are losing it badly when it comes to cultural issues. You and I often rue the collapse of the moderate wing of the G.O.P. that was occasionally willing to break with right-wing orthodoxies, but Democrats could also do more to embrace candidates who depart from progressive orthodoxies on issues like guns, immigration, school choice, trans issues and so on.Gail: “Depart from progressive orthodoxies” is a nice way of saying “embrace the bad.” I appreciate that it would be strategic for some purple-state Democrats to take moderate positions on guns, immigration, etc. But I’m not gonna be applauding somebody who, for instance, votes against an assault weapon ban.Bret: You’re reminding me of the story, probably apocryphal, of the supporter who told Adlai Stevenson, during one of his presidential runs in the 1950s, that “Every thinking person in America will be voting for you.”“I’m afraid that won’t do,” he supposedly replied. “I need a majority.”Gail: Let’s go back to infrastructure for a minute. Big story about that train wreck in Ohio. Do you agree with me that the whole thing is the fault of Republicans caving in to pressure from the rail industry to loosen regulations?Bret: Er, no. I read recently that there were more than 1,000 train derailments last year, which averages out to more than two a day, and that there’s been a 60 percent decline in railroad safety incidents since 1990. Accidents happen. When they do, they shouldn’t become a partisan issue.Gail: When major accidents happen in an industry that’s both necessarily regulated and greatly lobbied over, it should be a call for investigation.And while we’re on this subject, please let’s talk about our transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg ….Bret: So, to illustrate my point, I’m not going to raise an accusing finger at him. Not even remotely his fault, even if Republicans are trying hard to pin him with the blame. Although, for someone with presidential aspirations, he didn’t exactly help himself by showing up a day after Donald Trump did.Gail: Sort of embarrassed that while I was trying to ponder rail regulation, my thoughts kept drifting off to Buttigieg the possible presidential candidate.He’s one of the guys we always mention when we talk about who might be nominated if Biden doesn’t go for a second term. But Buttigieg’s performance in Ohio was definitely not the work of a guy who knows how to run for that job.Steve McCurry/Magnum PhotosBret: Switching subjects again, we should talk about the legacy of President Jimmy Carter. I was a 7-year-old child living in Mexico City when he left office, so your recollections of him are much more valuable and interesting than mine.Gail: I distinctly remember bemoaning the energy shortage that left drivers waiting in long lines at the gas stations, but that’s hardly an insider’s story.Bret: Those lines put last year’s spike in gas prices in perspective.Gail: And every Democrat worried about Carter’s minimal talent for communication. He made a big TV appearance to promote energy conservation, wearing a sweater and sitting next to a fire, looking more silly than inspiring.Now, when I recall some of the stuff he did — environmental protection, promoting diversity, negotiating a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt — I appreciate him a lot more.Bret: Airline deregulation, too. Made air travel affordable to middle-class America for the first time. And he had the guts to nominate Paul Volcker to the Federal Reserve in 1979 to jack up interest rates and finally tame inflation, even though it would help cost him his presidency the next year.Gail: But the biggest thing he’s leaving us, Bret, is the story of his post-presidency. Campaigning endlessly for human rights, fair voting around the world and housing for the poor. Rather than holding press conferences to make his point, he’d swing a hammer with the crew at low-income housing construction sites.If high-ranking politicians see retirement from their top jobs as just a path to giving big-money speeches and writing the occasional memoir, they set a bad example for every older American. Carter showed how the later stages of life can actually be the richest and most rewarding.Bret: There’s a lot about Carter’s policy views that didn’t square with my own, and his persona sometimes struck me as … immodestly modest. But he was a unique figure in American political life, and he single-handedly disproved F. Scott Fitzgerald’s contention about there being no second acts in American lives.Gail: Not to mention third acts!Bret: He also showed how much more valuable a purpose- and values-driven life can be than one consumed by the culture of celebrity, wealth and pleasure — something that seriously tarnished the post-presidential legacy of a certain Southern Democrat who succeeded him, to say nothing of an even more saturnalian Republican president.Totally different topic, Gail, but I want to recommend our colleague Michelle Goldberg’s terrific column on the terrible mental-health effects of social media, particularly for teenagers. She mentions a proposal by Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri to totally ban social media for kids under 16. It’s one to which, as a father of three teenagers, I’m pretty sympathetic. Your thoughts?Gail: I read Michelle’s great piece and remembered how paranoid I was as a teenager when I thought two of my friends might be talking about me on the phone after school. Can’t imagine how I’d have felt if they had the capacity to do it as a group, while they were supposed to be studying after dinner. With a transcript available to the entire class later in the evening.Bret: Not only frequently abusive but also addictive. Someone once said that there are only two industries that speak of their customers as “users” — drug dealers and social-media companies.Gail: Just saying that kids can’t use social media sounds very attractive. But somehow I have my doubts it’ll work. Wonder if the more likely outcome might be a system the more sophisticated kids could use while the poorer, or less technologically cool ones, got sidelined.Am I being overly paranoid?Bret: No ban works perfectly. But if we were able to more or less end teenage cigarette smoking over the last 20 years, it shouldn’t be out of the question to try to do the same with social-media use. I can’t imagine that it’s beyond the technological reach of a company like Apple to write some code that stops social-media apps from being downloaded to phones whose primary users they know are under the age of 16.Gail: Well, happy to insist they do that. Even if they don’t know how, it’d increase pressure for them to find a way.Bret: I would welcome it, and I suspect most teenagers would, too. It’s hard enough being 14 or 15 without needing to panic about some embarrassing Instagram pic or discovering too late that something stupid or awful you wrote on Facebook or Twitter at 16 comes back to haunt you at 20.Gail: Hey, it’s traumatic enough being haunted by what I said last month.Bret: Or last week.As columnists, we volunteered to have a paper trail for our critics to pick through. We owe it to the kids to shield them from creating public records of their own indiscretions and idiocies. Life will come roaring at them soon enough. I say no social media till they’re old enough to vote, smoke and maybe even buy a drink. Full-frontal stupidity should be left to the grown-ups — like us!The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      The Fox Newsification of Nikki Haley

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      Here’s what I think is one of the most intriguing questions in American politics today: How would Nikki Haley talk about the country and its challenges if Fox News didn’t exist?Here’s why: We’ve learned a lot in recent days about both Fox and Haley, the former South Carolina governor who has just started running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.Let’s start with Fox News. We all sort of knew the truth about Fox, but now there can be no doubt: Fox News is to journalism what the Mafia is to capitalism — same basic genre, but a morally corrupt perversion of the real thing.Before, during and after the 2020 election, it was not crazy to assume that Fox’s main prime-time hosts — Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham — actually believed some of the pro-Trump, election-fraud conspiracy theories and theorists that they were putting on the air. But now we have learned from a batch of recently disclosed text messages and emails that they didn’t believe any of it.The internal messages reveal that the three prime-time hosts, as well as others at Fox, privately made fun of, and were at times appalled by, the election-fraud claims of Donald Trump advisers like Sidney Powell and Rudolph Giuliani. But they mostly kept their skepticism hidden from viewers. Having gotten the Fox audience totally aroused by — and addicted to — claims of election fraud, Fox News’s leaders were afraid to stop. Why? They feared they would lose viewers and ad revenue to even crazier networks — Newsmax and OAN.The Fox News text messages, emails and testimony that expose all of this to public view are from depositions and discovery contained in a recently released legal filing in Delaware state court by Dominion Voting Systems. It is part of the company’s lawsuit against Fox News for broadcasting what it allegedly knew were false claims that Dominion machines helped to rig the 2020 election. The cynicism they reveal is breathtaking.The depth of it is best summed up in this account by The Times last week of an exchange dated Nov. 12, 2020: “In a text chain with Ms. Ingraham and Mr. Hannity, Mr. Carlson pointed to a tweet in which a Fox reporter, Jacqui Heinrich, fact-checked a tweet from Mr. Trump referring to Fox broadcasts and said there was no evidence of voter fraud from Dominion. ‘Please get her fired,’ Mr. Carlson said. He added: ‘It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.’ Ms. Heinrich had deleted her tweet by the next morning.”Yup, Fox hosts and the Murdoch family were OK with discrediting the core engine of America’s democracy — our ability to peacefully and legitimately transfer power — if it would hold their audience and boost their stock.Now enter Nikki Haley, who also last week announced her presidential bid.I’ve never met Haley, but from afar it seemed that she had a reasonably good story to tell — a successful South Carolina governor from 2011 to 2017, Trump’s first U.N. ambassador and the daughter of Indian immigrants. Her mother, Raj, studied law at the University of New Delhi, and after immigrating to South Carolina, earned a master’s degree in education and became a local public-school teacher. Her father, Ajit, earned a doctorate from the University of British Columbia and then taught as a biology professor at Voorhees College for 29 years. On the side, they even opened a clothing boutique.The whole family is a walking advertisement for how America has been enriched by immigration.And as governor, Haley’s best known — and most courageous — political act came in the aftermath of a white gunman killing nine Black parishioners during a June 2015 prayer session inside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. After it was discovered that the gunman had posed for numerous photos with Confederate symbols and was linked to a racist manifesto, Haley called for legislation that led to the removal of the Confederate flag that had flown on the State Capitol grounds since 1962.“We are not going to allow this symbol to divide us any longer,” Haley declared.Good on her. Now fast forward to Haley announcing her run for the presidency. Imagine all the ways she could have differentiated herself from Trump and Ron DeSantis.She could have said: “Friends, in the last two years, Congress passed bills to upgrade our infrastructure, our capacity to make advanced microchips and advanced clean energy systems. The first two were passed with bipartisan majorities. This legislation constitutes a launching pad that could enable America to dominate the 21st century. And I know how to get the most out of those launching pads.“During my time as governor, Greenville, S.C., became one of the nation’s most important hubs of wind energy innovation. As South Carolina’s Upstate Business Journal recently wrote, ‘According to a new study from the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C., think tank, inventors in Greenville were responsible for 172 wind energy patents over the past five years, more than any other metro area in the country.’ You bet! That’s because we made Greenville home to General Electric’s Power & Water energy engineering team.”Haley could have added, “I also know a lot about building infrastructure for high-tech manufacturing, because during my time as governor I helped to make South Carolina one of the nation’s most active hubs of advanced manufacturing — from advanced aircraft to cars to tires.”Haley could have then pivoted to explain that every one of those manufacturers today is telling us that to realize their full potential they need workers schooled in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). But they can’t find them. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, by 2025 America could need one million more engineers and other STEM professionals than we can produce at home at our current rate. She could have said the only way to fill that gap is by welcoming the world’s most energetic and high-skilled immigrants.Legal immigrants grow our pie and invent things that enhance our national security. As the daughter of two such immigrants, Haley could have committed to forging a long needed compromise that would truly halt illegal immigration while expanding legal immigration. As a governor who dared yank down the Confederate flag, she could boast that she had the spine to pull the country together to do big, hard things.Sure, that kind of speech would have challenged the Republican base, but I bet it would have energized many others — particularly independents and moderate Republicans looking for alternatives to Trump.But Haley said none of it.Here’s Peggy Noonan of The Wall Street Journal on Haley’s presidential announcement: “I found myself thinking not about her candidacy but about the launch itself, which was creepily stuck in the past. A horrible, blaring song from a Sylvester Stallone sequel pumped her in as she strode out in the white suit. … An introducer said she will ‘lead us into the future’; she added, ‘America is falling behind.’ It was all so tired, clichéd and phony.”And here’s Washington Post political analyst Dan Balz on Haley’s opening campaign video, which twice featured The New York Times Magazine’s “1619 Project” — which details the persistence of racism in American history — as red meat to the anti-woke crowd: Haley’s “video also highlights the 2015 mass shooting at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, where a white stranger killed nine Black people at a Bible study class. It does not mention Haley’s subsequent action to remove the Confederate flag from the South Carolina State House after years of controversy.”And now for the perfect ending to Haley’s presidential announcement events. The evening of her speech she appeared on — wait for it now — Hannity’s show on Fox, where she complained that the G.O.P. needs a message to “bring in” a variety of people and it must do a better job at messaging — but offered no actual message.The woman whose family immigration story could have so linked up with a concrete strategy for American renewal, the woman whose political courage in taking down the Confederate flag could have served as the perfect opening message to bring more minorities into the G.O.P., chose instead to do a bad imitation of Ron DeSantis.Why? Because like Hannity, Ingraham, Carlson and the Murdochs, Haley was more interested in following the Fox base than shaping it, let alone leading it to a better place.As I said, imagine what Nikki Haley might have sounded like if Fox News didn’t exist.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More